Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T03:23:39.218Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What shall I compare thee to? Legal journals, impact, citation and peer rankings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2021

Janja Hojnik Open the ORCID record for Janja Hojnik [Opens in a new window]
Janja Hojnik*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law, University of Maribor, Slovenia
*
*Author e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The pressure to distinguish high quality from lower quality law journals is intensifying. To contribute to this debate, citation-based and peer review-based ranking of law journals are paralleled in the paper, using qualitative and quantitative analysis. It is found that all law journals that are considered as journals of the highest quality by legal experts are also ranked highly in Web of Science (WoS) and that 40% of the law journals categorised as ‘internationally leading’ by the peers are not listed in WoS. This paper explores what the editors of some of the internationally leading law journals that are not listed in the WoS think about applying to be listed in it. The paper offers data to support the contention that legal scholarship is characterised by regionalism in academic publishing and citation patterns. It is submitted that there is no perfect indicator of quality, and that no evaluation system will ever convince every legal scholar in the world of its value. WoS could be adopted as a rigorous and internationally recognised index for law journals only if it were aligned more closely with the Leiden Manifesto.

Keywords

research evaluationranking of law journalscitation analysisWeb of Scienceimpact factor's snowball effectpeer reviewJUFODORALeiden Manifesto
Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 252 - 275
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Grateful thanks to Leon Brulc, Natalija Orešek and Petra Weingerl for their support when preparing this paper. The paper would not exist without an impactful workshop organised by Rob van Gestel and Andreas Lienhard in Bern in February 2017. Further thanks are due to Jan Smits, Monica Claes and other participants of a seminar on JIFs in legal scholarship that was organised by the Maastricht University Faculty of Law in December 2019, and to all the editors of law journals who have responded to my survey presented in this paper. Warm thanks to Legal Studies’ editors and anonymous referees for their most helpful remarks. Referee No 1 is to be thanked also for the title suggestion as it now stands. Any errors remain mine. All websites cited were last accessed on 7 January 2021. The paper refers to data in the Web of Science, Scopus and JUFO as of March 2020.

References

1 Reports show that global scientific output doubles every nine years: R Van Noorden ‘Global scientific output doubles every nine years’ Nature News Blog (7 May 2014) available at http://blogs.nature.com/news/2014/05/global-scientific-output-doubles-every-nine-years.html.

2 Gestel, R van ‘Sense and non-sense of a European ranking of law schools and law journals’ (2015) 35 LS 165Google Scholar; van Leeuwen, T ‘Bibliometric research evaluations, web of science and the social sciences and humanities: a problematic relationship?’ (2013) 2 Bibliometrie - Praxis und ForschungGoogle Scholar; Svantesson, DJB ‘International ranking of law journals – can it be done and at what cost?’ (2009) 29 LS 678Google Scholar; M Milanovic ‘Horrible metrics’ EJIL: Talk! (24 August 2016).

3 Eg in Sweden, 20% of direct public funding of research is nowadays performance based: Engelbrekt, AB ‘Evaluation of academic legal publications in Sweden’ in van Gestel, R and Lienhard, A (ed) Evaluating Academic Legal Research in Europe: The Advantage of Lagging Behind (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) p 173Google Scholar.

4 Taylor, J ‘Managing the unmanageable’ (2006) 18 Higher Education Management and Policy 1 at 2, 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abramo, G et al. ‘When research assessment exercises leave room for opportunistic behavior by the subjects under evaluation’ (2019) 13 Journal of Informetrics 830CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Eg for the purposes of government research funding of universities and for the purposes of university distribution of funding among the research departments and schools. In fact, an increasing number of countries across the world perform cyclic national research evaluations for funding purposes: UK REF, Australian RAE, New Zealand's PBRF, Italy's Research Quality Evaluation (VQR), Netherland's Standard Evaluation Protocols (SEP) etc.

6 In recruitment of, and promotion procedures for, individual researchers, as well as when selecting research projects for funding.

7 C Aaen-Stockdale ‘Counting citations adds up to improved science’ Times Higher Education (THE) (2 December 2019).

8 JR Goodman ‘Citation counting is killing academic dissent’ Times Higher Education (THE) (25 November 2019).

9 Moed, HF Citation Analysis in Research Evaluation (Springer Netherlands, 2005) p 15Google Scholar.

10 J Belluz and S Hoffman ‘Let's stop pretending peer review works’ Vox (7 December 2015); C Tancock ‘When reviewing goes wrong: the ugly side of peer review’ Elsevier Connect (23 March 2018) available at https://www.elsevier.com/connect/editors-update/when-reviewing-goes-wrong-the-ugly-side-of-peer-review; D Matthews ‘Nobelist backs internal review for papers, “trust” scores for scientists’ Times Higher Education (THE) (29 July 2019).

11 As far as citation analysis is concerned, Moed considers law to be a part of the humanities. He refers to a study that involved law and linguistics and found that the main lines of the methodology were the same: Moed, above n 9, p 159.

12 In 2018 economics held the record for the number of new journals in the JCR, while the share of books in the research output is considerably lower than in law.

13 Gestel, R van and Vranken, J ‘Assessing legal research: sense and nonsense of peer review versus bibliometrics and the need for a European approach’ (2011) 12 German Law Journal 929Google Scholar.

14 Most recently van Gestel, R and Lienhard, A (eds) Evaluating Academic Legal Research in Europe: The Advantage of Lagging Behind (Edward Elgar, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Perez, O et al. ‘The network of law reviews: citation cartels, scientific communities, and journal rankings’ (2019) 82 Modern Law Review 240CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Perez et al, above n 14, at 244. This figure was compiled by aggregating data from the Washington & Lee dataset, Web of Science, and the Scopus lists of law journals as of 31 December 2017.

16 K Purnhagen and N Petersen ‘Evaluation of academic legal publications in Germany’ in Van Gestel and Lienhard, above n 14, p 91.

17 E Maier ‘Evaluation of academic legal publications in Austria’ in Van Gestel and Lienhard, above n 14, p 116.

18 A Lienhard et al ‘Evaluation of academic legal publications in Switzerland’ in van Gestel and Lienhard, above n 14, p 152.

19 G Peruginelli ‘Evaluation of academic legal publications in Italy’ in Van Gestel and Lienhard, above n 14, p 248.

20 A Ruda ‘Evaluation of academic legal publications in Spain’ in Van Gestel and Lienhard, above n 14, p 306.

21 R van Gestel and M Snel ‘Evaluation of academic legal publications in the Netherlands’ in Van Gestel and Lienhard, above n 14, p 64.

22 The founder of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), later operated by Thomson Reuters and currently by Clarivate Analytics. The latter is operating the platform WoS.

23 Web of Science Core Collection: Introduction, https://clarivate.libguides.com/woscc.

24 J Testa ‘Selection process’, available at https://clarivate.com/essays/journal-selection-process/. See also Testa, J ‘The Thomson Reuters journal selection process’ (2009) 1 Transnational Corporations Review 59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Garfield, E Citation Indexing – Its Theory and Application in Science, Technology, and Humanities (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1979)Google Scholar. An analysis of 11,813 journals across all categories of natural and social sciences covered in 2014 JCR revealed that as few as 525 journals account for 50% of what is cited and more that 25% of what is published in them. A core of 4470 of these journals accounts for 80% of published articles and nearly 85% of cited articles. See also Moed, above n 9, pp 110–112.

26 Allahbadia, GN ‘Thinking beyond the Thomson Reuters “impact factor”’ (2014) 64 The Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology of India 231CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Aaen-Stockdale, above n 7.

28 Van Gestel and Lienhard, above n 14, p 3; Chorus, C and Waltman, L ‘A large-scale analysis of impact factor biased journal self-citations’ (2016) 11 PLoS One e0161021CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

29 E Garfield ‘The use of journal impact factors and citation analysis for evaluation of science, cell separation, hematology and journal citation analysis’ mini symposium in tribute to Arne Bøyum, Rikshospitalet, Oslo (17 April 1998) and Garfield, above n 25, pp 23–24.

30 Pointing out that many great scientists have been misunderstood and heavily criticised at the beginning: Moosa, IA Publish or Perish: Perceived Benefits versus Unintended Consequences (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018) pp 80–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On negative citation see also Moed, above n 9, p 84.

31 San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (2012), available at https://sfdora.org/.

32 D Hicks et al ‘Bibliometrics: the Leiden Manifesto for research metrics’ (2015) 520 Nature News 429.

33 European Commission ‘Future of scholarly publishing and scholarly communication: report of the expert group to the European Commission’ (Publications Office of the European Union 2019) Expert Group Report.

34 Methodology for Shanghai Ranking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2018, http://www.shanghairanking.com/Shanghairanking-Subject-Rankings/Methodology-for-ShanghaiRanking-Global-Ranking-of-Academic-Subjects-2018.html#3.

35 Moosa, above n 30, p 99.

36 G Sivertsen ‘Why has no other European country adopted the research excellence framework?’ LSE Impact Blog (16 January 2018).

37 Ruda, above n 20, p 317.

38 Sentencia del Tribunal Supremo, STS, JUR 2018/186305, 12 June 2018.

39 Engelbrekt, above n 3, pp 173–174.

40 Ibid, pp 177–178.

41 N Stern ‘Building on success and learning from experience: an independent review of the research excellence framework (London: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy)’ (2016) Energy and Industrial Strategy 21. See also G Sivertsen ‘Unique, but still best practice? The research excellence framework (REF) from an international perspective’ (2017) 3 Palgrave Communications 17078.

42 Decree on the public financing of higher education institutions and other institutions, OG RS No 35/17, 24/19.

43 More on this in J Hojnik ‘Evaluation of academic legal publications in Slovenia’ in Van Gestel and Lienhard, above n 14, p 341.

44 Author's e-mail correspondence with Jürgen Basedow, editor of Zeitschrift für Europäisches Privatrecht, 22 May 2019.

45 Ibid. For other negative positions towards citation analysis in law see eg Council of Australian Law Deans (CALD) Statement on the Nature of Legal Research (2005) p 5, available at https://cald.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/cald-statement-on-the-nature-of-legal-research-20051.pdf and J Wilsdon The Metric Tide: Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management (Sage, 2016), who reports that UK legal scholars did not agree with citation analysis being used for research evaluation under the UK REF 2014.

46 This increase is relatively slower than for example in the field of history (210% increase in the same period), economics (147% increase), or computer sciences (139% increase).

47 Perez et al, above n 14, at 244. They made a study of 45 US student-edited and 45 peer reviewed journals included in the category of Law in the JCR and found that citations in the US student edited journals are directed almost exclusively to student edited journals, which distorts the journals’ ranking and reflects ‘tacit cartelistic behavior generated by deeply entrenched institutional practices’ - at 243. Before this study Dibadj discussed a similar bias – see R Dibadj ‘Fashions and Methodology. Rethinking Legal Scholarship: A Transatlantic Interchange’ (October 20, 2015), available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2676844. See also R van Gestel, H-W Micklitz and EL Rubin Rethinking Legal Scholarship: A Transatlantic Dialogue (Cambridge: CUP, 2017), part I, ch 4.

48 Moreover, the Physical chemistry chemical physics weekly journal alone publishes around 3,500 articles a year - Incites Journal Citation Reports, Journal Search, Physical chemistry chemical physics, years range 2013–2017, https://jcr.clarivate.com.

49 See data in Clarivate Analytics, Frequency of publications under each category.

50 The h-index is defined as the maximum value of h such that the given author has published h papers that have each been cited at least h times. Provided that an author has published only two papers, though highly cited, her h-index cannot be higher than 2. JE Hirsch ‘An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output’ (2005) 102 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 16569.

51 By comparison, the highest JIF in economics in 2017 was 7.8, 36 in physics, 52 in chemistry, 79 in medicine and 244 in oncology.

52 Comparing 1994 and 2017, the average JIF in physics has grown from 1.4 to 2.99; in chemistry from 1.25 to 4.23, in medicine from 2.69 to 3.53, in oncology from 1.99 to 5.46 and in economics from 0.654 to 1.48.

53 The record number of co-authors was recorded in physics with a 2012 article with 3171 co-authors: G Aad et al ‘Observation of a new particle in the search for the standard model Higgs Boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC’ (2012) 716 Physics Letters B 1. See also S Baker ‘Authorship: are the days of the lone research ranger mumbered?’ Times Higher Education (THE) (3 July 2019).

54 Yale Law Journal (Submission Guidelines): ‘For Articles, we strongly encourage submissions of fewer than 25,000 words, including footnotes (roughly 50 Journal pages)’.

55 AJ Swygart-Hobaugh ‘A citation analysis of the quantitative/qualitative methods debate's reflection in sociology research: implications for library collection development’ (2004) 28 Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services 180.

56 CA-A Cancer Journal for Clinicians held the overall highest JIF in 2017 – 244 with nearly 13,000 citations per 53 articles published in the previous two years, while in crystallography, the citations of a paper by GM Sheldrick ‘A Short History of SHELX’ (2008) 64 Acta Crystallographica Section A: Foundations of Crystallography 112 were as follows: 3521 (in 2008), 4891 (in 2009), 6937 (in 2010), 8181 (in 2011) and 4816 (in 2012). With his paper Sheldrick generated a citation explosion bringing the JIF in 2009 and 2010 up to 50 or higher, whereas before 2009 it was around 2, and, as was predicted beforehand, the JIF returned to around 2 again in 2011. There is more on this in J Reedijk ‘The value and accuracy of key figures in scientific evaluations’ (2014) 87 Wenner-Gren International Series 85.

57 In 2018, the threshold JIF for the most prestigious first quartile was 1.7, while the threshold for the third quartile was 0.6.

58 Moed, above n 9, pp 160–163. See also Researchers’ perspectives on the purpose and value of the monograph: Survey results (Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press, 2019), which covered more than 5000 researchers in the social sciences and humanities, and reported that ‘91 per cent of respondents considered monographs “extremely” or “very” important to the overall body of knowledge in their subject area’.

59 Wilsdon, above n 45, p 40.

60 Ibid. In UK REF (2014) books’ output covered authored books, edited books, scholarly editions and book chapters, as well as books that are primarily written for teaching (eg textbooks).

61 Moed, above n 9, pp 42–45.

62 Clarivate Analytics ‘Journal citation reports: reasons for not calculating impact factors for journals covered in Arts & Humanities Citation Index’ 27 June 2018, https://support.clarivate.com/ScientificandAcademicResearch/s/article/Journal-Citation-Reports-Reasons-for-not-calculating-Impact-Factors-for-journals-covered-in-Arts-Humanities-Citation-Index?language=en_US.

63 Hicks et al, above n 32.

64 Moed, above n 9, p 149.

65 MA Waters ‘Justice Scalia on the use of foreign law in constitutional interpretation: unidirectional monologue or co-constitutive dialogue’ (2004) 12 Tulsa Journal of Comparative and International Law 149.

66 Moed, above n 9, p 135.

67 Three in Australia; two in Spain and China; and one in Canada, Taiwan, Chile, South Africa, South Korea and Germany (although the editor-in-chief of the last of these is a Dutch professor). Even though in most research disciplines US journals dominate the WoS ranking, this dominance is not as strong as in the field of law: eg in chemistry, 150 out of 556 listed journals are US-based (27%); in criminology, 27 out of 61 listed journals are US-based (44%); in public administration, out of 47 listed journals 16 of them are US-based (34%); and in international relations 34 journals out of 86 listed journals are US-based (40%).

68 70 of them from Australia.

69 112 of them from Spain.

70 All of them from Latin America.

71 40 of them from various African states.

72 56 of them from China.

73 Missing data on affiliation of the author of the citing paper. The data in Table 6 do not necessarily match with the overall number of citations to the journal as there are some papers with several authors, sometimes from research institutions based in different countries.

74 52 of them from Australia.

75 All of them from Spain.

76 3 of them from Latin America.

77 29 of them from various African states.

78 14 of them from China.

79 SCImago, https://www.scimagojr.com/help.php#understand_countries.

80 With 1 citation from the previous two years 2017 JIF of the Journal of African Law was 0.023. Consequently, it was removed from the WoS in 2018.

81 Moed, above n 9, p 44.

82 See https://clarivate.com/essays/journal-selection-process/.

83 Revista Espanola de Derecho Constitucional and Revista Chilena de Derecho that are published in Spanish and multilingual Dutch Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis-Revue d Histoire du Droit – The Legal History Review.

84 RE Hamel, a Mexican linguist, has also criticised the Arts & Humanities Citation Index for its poor reflection of non-English publications, finding that there were more Spanish-language publications from authors based in the US in the index than from any other Spanish-speaking country: Hamel, RE ‘El campo de las ciencias y la educación superior entre el monopolio del inglés y el plurilingüismo: elementos para una política del lenguaje en América Latina’ (2013) 52 Trabalhos em Linguística Aplicada 321CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Meneghini, R and Packer, AL ‘Is there science beyond English?: initiatives to increase the quality and visibility of non-English publications might help to break down language barriers in scientific communication’ (2007) 8 EMBO Reports 112CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Bitetti, MS Di and Ferreras, JA ‘Publish (in English) or perish: the effect on citation rate of using languages other than English in scientific publications’ (2017) 46 Ambio 121CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

85 As noted by Sivertsen, ‘in the main Norwegian social science journals, or in the main Norwegian history journal, you can publish on other types of research than you present internationally. (…) Particularly in parts of the social sciences, if researchers want to publish in a US journal, they needed to use US data’. See also D Matthews ‘Switch to English “risks social relevance” of European humanities’ Times Higher Education (14 September 2019).

86 Principle (No 3) states that it is important to protect excellence in locally relevant research: Hicks et al, above n 32.

87 Peer review-based rankings are seen as the main alternative to the citation approach to journal ranking – next to download frequency-based ranking and the number of subscribers-based approach: Moosa, above n 30, ch 6.

88 Ibid, p 98. For further criticism of the Australian exercise in respect of the law journals see Svantesson, DJB et al. ‘The ghost of rankings past – the last harmful impact of journal rankings, and what we should do instead’ (2014) 26 Bond Law Review 71Google Scholar; Svantesson, above n 2.

89 Engelbrekt, above n 3, p 176.

90 Report on the pilot exercise to develop bibliometric indicators for the REF (HEFCE, 2009) p 3, available at https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/138/1/09_39.pdf.

91 P Letto-Vanamo ‘Evaluation of academic legal publications in Finland’ in van Gestel and Lienhard, above n 14, p 218.

92 Eg the US Washington & Lee Law Journal Rankings, the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative, where journals were classified under four tiers (A*, A, B and C), a list of law journals drawn up by the French Agency for evaluation of research (AERES), the ‘Latindex’ in Latin America, the Polish Journal Ranking (PJR) etc.

93 Danish BFI list, Finnish JUFO list and Norwegian NDS list. From January 2016 the Norwegian Register has also been used to accredit research publications in South Africa: Sør-Afrika vil ha norsk register, which until September 2019 was available on the nds.no website.

94 Information on the functioning of the ranking have been retrieved from the JUFO Portal, available at https://www.julkaisufoorumi.fi/en.

95 While, until 2009, 0.3% of the basic funding of universities was granted on the basis of publications, the share accounted for by the publications of all university funding grew to 13% in 2013.

96 JUFO, Classification criteria, http://www.julkaisufoorumi.fi/en/evaluations/classification-criteria.

97 Letto-Vanamo, above n 91. She also points out that the same is also true for book publishers, so that all Level 3 publishers publish legal books only in English (eg Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press).

98 The whole list of Level 2 journals can be retrieved at https://www.tsv.fi/julkaisufoorumi/haku.php?lang=en, selecting rank 2 and ‘law’ under the social sciences.

99 Eg Cahiers de Droit Europeen, Rechtstheorie, Revue International de Droit Compare, Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis and Zeitschrift für Europäisches Privatrecht. In total, there are 14 journals in this group that are not fully published in English.

100 Eg Quaderni Costituzionali, Revue du Marche Commun et de l'Union Europeenne, Zeitschrift für Europarecht, Internationales Privatrecht und Rechtsvergleichung etc.

101 Author's e-mail correspondence with Jukka Snell, Head of the JUFO panel for law, 9 August 2019.

102 An Excel table with all the data on the 989 law journals listed on the JUFO ranking with parallel information on rankings in quartiles of WoS and Scopus is published on my Research Gate profile.

103 According to JUFO, all of the world's top law journals that are listed in Q1 of WoS are also positioned in the upper rank of the Norwegian and Danish peer review ranking, with the exception of the American Journal of International Law which is ranked in the lower rank of the Danish listing.

104 Thus Law&Philosophy, which is considered a world top law journal in JUFO, is only listed in Q4 of WoS.

105 American Journal of Comparative Law, European Law Review and the Journal of Law and Society.

106 Such as the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, Michigan Law Review, NYU Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Texas Law Review, UCLA Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review and University of Pennsylvania Law Review.

107 Criminal Law Review, IIC-International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law, Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Journal of Value Inquiry, Journal of World Energy Law and Business and Tijdschrift Voor Rechtsgeschiedenis.

108 Eg European Review of Private Law, European Company and Financial Law Review, European Journal of Health Law, Industrial Law Journal, Intertax, Journal of Energy and Natural Resources Law, Journal of Private International Law, Law and Critique, Legal Theory, Ratio Juris, Res Publica, Rabel Journal of Comparative and International Private Law etc.

109 While 51 out of 62 leading law journals on the Norwegian list are also ranked as world top or internationally leading in the Finnish ranking (ie an 82% match), the same can be said for only 53 out of 87 law journals from the Danish list (ie a 61% match).

110 Danish Juristen, several nordiske tidsskrifter (Nordic journals in Danish), Norweigian Tidsskrift for Rettsvitenskap (Journal of Legal Studies) etc.

111 European Company and Financial Law Review, European Competition Law Review, European Energy and Environmental Law Review, European Journal of Health Law, European Labour Law Journal, European Taxation, World Tax Journal, International Data Privacy Law etc.

112 Such as European Journal of Social Security.

113 For some comparisons between WoS and Scopus see T Bartol et al ‘Assessment of research fields in Scopus and Web of Science in the view of national research evaluation in Slovenia’ (2014) 98(2) Scientometrics 1491.

114 Campbell, K et al. ‘Ranking of United Kingdom law journals: an analysis of the research assessment exercise 2001 submissions and results’ (2006) 33 Journal of Law and Society 350–351CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

115 In contrast, less than half (14 out of 33) of the leading UK law journals are also listed in WoS.

116 Ie the European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context.

117 Administrative Law Review, Aggression and Violent Behavior, Boston University Law Review, Child Abuse Review, Chinese Journal of International Law, International Environmental Agreements: Politics Law and Economics, International Journal of Transitional Justice, Journal of Experimental Criminology, Legal and Criminological Psychology, Marine Policy, Minnesota Law Review, Psychology Crime and Law, Psychology Public Policy and Law, Social Science Computer Review and Trauma Violence and Abuse.

118 Eg Child Abuse Review, Marine Policy, Social Science Computer Review and several criminology journals.

119 Eg Boston University Law Review and Minnesota Law Review.

120 Eg Chinese Journal of International Law.

121 Out of the group in the previous footnote, only Marine Policy and Journal of Experimental Criminology are classified as leading in the Danish ranking and Social Science Computer Review is classified as leading in the Norwegian ranking.

122 Eg in 2018, University of Pennsylvania Law Review was awarded the highest JIF among the law journals listed in WoS, yet has rank 2 on JUFO.

123 Eg European Law Journal: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14680386.

124 See above n 93.

125 Author's e-mail correspondence with Frank Hendrickx, editor of the European Labour Law Journal, 17 June 2019.

126 E-mail correspondence with an editor of a law journal published by Wiley, 3 June 2019.

127 J Beall Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers (3rd edn, 2015), available at https://beallslist.weebly.com/uploads/3/0/9/5/30958339/criteria-2015.pdf.

128 Van Gestel and Vranken, above n 13, at 929.

129 See also Gutwirth, S ‘The evaluation of legal science, the Vl. IR.-model for integral quality assessment of research law: what next’ in Eisendrath, H and Van Bendegem, JP It Takes Two to Do Science, The Puzzling Interactions between Science and Society (ASP, 2009) p 69Google Scholar.

130 Moed, above n 9, p 4. Or as noted by Woods, ‘academic citation-based systems are not wholly invalid’: PA Woods ‘Stop counting (or at least count better)’ (2014) JOTWELL Conference, The Journal of Things We Like (Lots), available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2506633.

131 Wilsdon, above n 45, p viii.

132 Hicks et al, above n 32.